The man stared fixedly ahead of him. Petra was about to say something to her mother, but her glance was drawn to the woman sitting two seats over from them in a slant of transient sunlight from the window. A shock of orange curls, half a face. The other masked in shadow. The woman turned, and for a moment she was out of the shadow, in complete sunlight. But she still only had half a face. It wasn’t a mask or a bandage. The lower half of her jaw was just… not there. As if it had been eaten away by small teeth. That’s how it seemed for the second the woman turned. But she settled back into the slant of light and her face looked natural again. Just a weird optical illusion. The shift in light and contrast. The woman was looking back towards her, but not really focused on her. Petra thought she should stop staring. Besides, Helena was still talking.

‘I always tell her she’s too old to be learning new ways to fit in. That’s what a kid does at school, hey?’

‘Stop it,’ Petra hissed, turning her attention back to her mother as she felt the spite coming from the old guy. She physically rotated her mother towards the door.

‘I think people should be themselves, don’t you?’ This was directed more at the air than at anyone specific. Helena was winding down, her voice mercifully becoming less public. ‘The rest of the world can like it or lump it. Hey, love?’

‘Yes, Mum. Shush, Mum,’ Petra said.

‘You’re too right, love,’ the man said, clearing his hoarse throat and offering a smile to Petra’s great surprise and relief. She’d been envisioning Helena stoking an ugly scene, an episode of go-back-home apoplexy. ‘My daughter’s the same. They worry a lot, don’t they? Too many people telling them how to behave.’

Helena turned to face him. ‘My point exactly, sir,’ she laughed. ‘It’s a pleasure to know you.’

Petra kept her arm around Helena’s shoulders and directed her towards the exit. ‘Let’s go, Mom.’

‘Far as I’m concerned, you’re welcome here, love. Just be yourself,’ the man advised. ‘And remember to have fun. Life is short.’

Once they’d signed the paperwork at the reception desk, Petra hustled Helena through to the cashier’s room, remembering not to drag her mother too fast. Helena was giving no indication that she’d had her side sliced open a few hours before and a vacuum tube stuck into her organs… ‘Is a gallbladder even an organ?’ she asked Helena. They were like that – Petra fully expected Helena to slot into the gap in her thoughts, and often she did. As an only child with nobody else to compare with, Petra thought she had a close bond with her mother. Sometimes she imagined them like the sort of sisters you’d see on TV; Helena had always been on the same wavelength as Petra. She could follow the unspoken trail of logic that had led from one utterance to the next.